Vitanza, Victor. Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric
(1997)
We always get what we want but seldom get what we need—contrary to the Stones, says Vitanza.
A mishmash of everyone and everything—irreverent—removes the continuum in a way.
Schiappa says sophist rhetoric is a mirage—a fiction invented by Plato—and we can do without that delineation.
Vitanza says rhet has identified itself by what it is not : negation.
“This book is a large scale effort to reassess the sense of negation that Burke helps to define. Burke” every positive is a negative but only in thought.” Sophistry as the it and non sophist rhet as the negation, which, without sophistry would have no identity?
Book is also a reconsideration of other important figures to rhetorical historiography (Jarrett, Schiappa, Poulakos)
Vitanza seeks movement from negative possibilities and probabilities too
“the bad boy of rhetoric” some call him.
Book is “a labyrinthine journey of modern and postmodern classical theorists to clear space for alternative readings.”
For Vitanza, the issue is who is excluded and silenced through disciplinary practices which seek to control and limit through “proper” identification. Those who are constituted as subjects. What happens to those, who, be definitional caveat, are simply not. Because they cannot be identified, because they do not fit within the paradigm.
Wants to avoid negative essentialization in order to develop a nonpositive affirmative Third sophistic based on general libidinzed economy of excess. WTF? Antibinary?
Socrates Plato “Rhetoric is counterpart of cookery”
Aristotle “Rhetoric is counterpart of Dialectic—rhet is the art of discovering available means of persuasion in a given case.
De Quincy says there are two definitions, one occupied with the general end of the fine arts—intellectual pleasure. The other to a definite purpose of utility—fraud.
Booth says Rhetoric “creates meaning”
Richards says “Rhetoric is the study of misunderstanding and its remedies”
Burke says “Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall” Persuasion. “ the ideal rhetoric is consubstantiality, that is sympathetic understanding among all men”
G. Kennedy says rhet is the energy inherent in emotion and thought, transmitted through a system of signs, including language, to others to influence their decisions and actions.
Bitzer says it is a mode of altering reality by the creation of a discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.
Winterowd says rhet is the study of honest effective communication.
Vitanza, Victor. Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric
(1997)
- We always get what we want but seldom get what we need—contrary to the Stones, says Vitanza.
- A mishmash of everyone and everything—irreverent—removes the continuum in a way.
- Schiappa says sophist rhetoric is a mirage—a fiction invented by Plato—and we can do without that delineation.
- Vitanza says rhet has identified itself by what it is not : negation.
- “This book is a large scale effort to reassess the sense of negation that Burke helps to define. Burke” every positive is a negative but only in thought.” Sophistry as the it and non sophist rhet as the negation, which, without sophistry would have no identity?
- Book is also a reconsideration of other important figures to rhetorical historiography (Jarrett, Schiappa, Poulakos)
- Vitanza seeks movement from negative possibilities and probabilities too
- “the bad boy of rhetoric” some call him.
- Book is “a labyrinthine journey of modern and postmodern classical theorists to clear space for alternative readings.”
- Plato unifies (one). Isocrates divides (dissoi logi—two) Corsias explodes, many more, multiple subjectives.
- Envisions a radically different third sophistic
- For Vitanza, the issue is who is excluded and silenced through disciplinary practices which seek to control and limit through “proper” identification. Those who are constituted as subjects. What happens to those, who, be definitional caveat, are simply not. Because they cannot be identified, because they do not fit within the paradigm.
Wants to avoid negative essentialization in order to develop a nonpositive affirmative Third sophistic based on general libidinzed economy of excess.WTF?
Antibinary?